The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

The moment their smiles stretched from end to end, they opened their mouths, gaping wide to an unsettling oval shape. The frog's head puckered its lips, and Oscar dodged the incoming attack, a long green tongue, about as thick as his arm, stuck into the ground. The tongue wriggled and rolled back into the frog's mouth, which croaked loudly and shot out again, this time at Sirsi. The saliva-ridden tongue stuck out and pulled back so fast that Oscar thought the frog had a hundred tongues shooting out simultaneously.

"Watch out!' Sirsi shouted. The creature used its frog legs, stretching out its bird head, the sharp beak tearing through the air of its leap. She reacted quickly and diverted the direction of the blow with a wall of soft and slippery water. As it crashed into the wall, Oscar retreated with the others, watching the creature fumble around. She let out a heavy breath and said, "Geez, what were those researchers doing, leaving this thing here?"

"What is it?" Oscar asked.

"A fusion of three creatures, as you can see. I heard rumors that they were experimenting with more variants, but this one is beyond what I heard." She frowned at the creature's frantic noises, the mix of cries, caws, and croaks. "Use ranged spells for now. Test out its weaknesses."

At his command, the Eirin separated out into hundreds of golden rods, burning with flames. Erden charged up a small sun in his antlers, spinning it until it began to hum. Sirsi raised her waters and condensed them into spears, vortexes swirling long their heads. They bombarded the creature with all of their gathered might. However, it was futile. The frog's tongue ate the vortex spears, the wings wrapped around its body and withstood the burning golden rods, the flames dying within the thick feathers and wisping away as trails of smoke, and the bird's beak countered Erden's sunbeam with a screeching caw, winds bursting from its mouth, exceptionally powerful like a typhoon.

Oscar considered using the Guise, but with Sirsi right nearby, he could not afford to lose control of his body for a whole day. He flared his Eirin and sent it out, clenching his fists, molding it into a human form. Another him appeared out of thin air, and Demon soon entered inside, taking control of the Duality body. His alter ego ran in without fear, dodging the frog's tongue. The closer he got, the more intense the tongue lashed until it could no longer be seen with the naked eye. Using his Prinstyct, he cracked through parts of the beast's eidolon, relaying the course of its attacks to Demon.

Oscar rode on Erden and joined the fray, Sirsi following up from the side. Demon got the closest, and a wing slashed him, shattering gold flakes from his Indestructible Gold everywhere. The accursed hybrid seemed to realize it was surrounded and spread its wings, feathers flying out with great precision, twisting and turning at all four of them. They avoided Oscar's shield, some hints of intelligence guiding each feather, and glinted their sharp edges toward his body. Surrounded, Oscar combined Ripple Shroud and Shattering Wave.

He was safe for now. The others handled the feathers in their own way. The hybrid did not let up, the human face crying harder as the bird's beak opened up, winds spiraling out. Small as it was, a faint gust, it grew faster and wider, a tornado, until there was no escaping its reach. A green tongue slithered and rode the winds. Oscar gathered Demon and Erden, letting Sirsi handle herself. Sheens of gold coated their bodies, and three flaming barriers blazed brightly around them. His defenses held strong, not bothered by the winds, which were oddly weak, his wariness growing.

The frog opened its mouth wider, so wide, the other heads retracted away, the human's cry muffled and meek. An icy drop of fear chilled his heart, stopping it for a beat, and Oscar soon knew the source. The tongue that had spread all over, thanks to the cover and speed of the winds, instantly closed in, squeezing into his flame barriers. His fires slowly flickered and waned as they swam in the overflowing saliva. Tossing in more Eirin, Oscar prevented the foul-stenched saliva from dousing his fire.

In a split second, before the tongue could return to the frog's gaping mouth, Oscar combined his powers with Demon and Erden, resonating all of their power together. His Golden Maw expanded out, the metal becoming molten from the triple layering of their flames. The melting dragon's head chomped on a part of the tongue, pulling it back to create a gap. Erden stomped and bolted through the created gap, his antler wings burning away the saliva on their branches.

Three sets of eyes locked onto him, and Oscar shivered, for he was right before the hybrid, a few feet away from the heads. If he had been any slower, he would have been swallowed. However, this was still the perfect chance for him. They separated, and each targeted a head. Demon went for the frog, Erden targeted the bird, and Oscar put it upon himself to end the poor human's life. The human's eyes blinked several times, his golden drilling reflecting in those pools of clarity.

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'They're clear? Wait….' Oscar gazed into its eyes and reconfirmed it. But the realization made him shudder. It wasn't only intelligence. It had a will, an ego within its warped mind. The other hybrids showed no signs of having such, only beastly instincts guiding their moves. But this one…this insult to all that was natural held reason and thought. Oscar urged time to go faster, his Golden Drill only a few inches away.

A gigantic serpent of tempests hissed and constricted around the hybrid's body, holding down its wings from interrupting his assault. Sirsi somehow managed to escape the tongue prison and sent in her aid. He didn't want to thank her, but it was a timely move, and his Golden Drill was an inch away. The human face contorted, clanking its teeth repeatedly, and shook around. A green tongue whipped on his drill and flung him away, the air escaping his lungs as he crashed into the bed of rubble, his back cracking several times in pain.

"Oscar!" Sirsi pulled him out of the rubble and took him away.

"Let go of him!" Erden drove his antlers toward her, separating her from Oscar, and allowed him to lean on his side. "Are you alright?"

"Never better." Oscar coughed out dust, gripping tightly on Erden's neck. His eyes shone brightly, reflecting the light from above. He pointed at the hybrid and said, "Did you see it?"

"What happened?" Sirsi asked. "Geez, you need to explain."

"Your New Dawn has done some work. It thinks for itself. A mind is inside that disgraceful form." The hybrid huddled itself into a defensive position. Oscar kept his eyes on the frog's head, a clean, bloody hole on its forehead that did not exist before. The frog's head gargled and hung its tongue partly out of its mouth, twitching erratically. When the tongue extended out, he saw from Demon's vision that it ignored the attack completely to defend the human head from him. He said with a smile, "It has a weakness. The control for everything is the mind in the human's head. If we destroy it, the chances are high it will fall."

"Quite unexpected. I don't believe the researchers here knew about it. This would have been a great step forward for their progress. Too bad I'm not on good terms with them. Feel free to burn it down later." Sirsi clenched her gloves and pounded them together, a fierce smile of Voltens at the height of battle stretching across her lips. "I'll hold it down. It's up to you to break through what remains and cut off its head."

Her Eirin rose, and she formed two water serpents, imparting her softness and slipperiness to them. The hybrid screeched and beat its wings once, a devastating shockwave quaking the room. Her serpents splashed and squished into varying forms under pressure, but they slipped through and coiled around the wings and legs. Sirsi leaped forward, her right hand clenched tight as the Eirin around it reached immense levels. The hybrid broke free a talon and clasped it onto her.

Three large cuts formed, two on the floor and one on the ceiling, matching the angles of the talon. Sirsi's fist swirled with a maelstrom and clashed against the talon, quaking the room once again, and she could not withstand the force of their attacks. Her short gasp sounded as she crashed into the wall, but the hybrid lost its balance and fell, cracks spreading crazily until the floor caved in. Its physical power was astounding, but Sirsi's was quite incredible. Oscar suspected it had to do with her right hand, some kind of amplification.

He dove in on the opening and aimed for the human head, the wailing growing worse as he, Demon, and Erden rushed toward it. The frog stretched out its tongue, but Erden formed a blade with his antlers, scorching the edges red with incredible heat. In a single strike, he cut off the tongue right as it lunged into his body and sent him flying to crash into the ceiling. Demon wrapped around the bird's beak and solidified himself, using Indestructible Gold and Edureisclad. It was merely a Duality body, so it didn't matter if it was destroyed.

The human face wailed harder, a look of pleading reaching Oscar, but that only spurred him on. His Golden Drill fell, driven into the dome of the human's head, eviscerating every brain matter into a pulpy mess that seeped out in white foam. The screech assaulted his ears, and he winced, closing his eyes for a brief moment. A large wing, freed from Sirsi's bindings, rammed into him, nothing but feathers in his sight. Disorientated, Oscar bounced from the ceiling to the floor, forming a trail of gold plating until he crashed full force into the wall.

His artificial arm creaked but could not move. He had used it to shield himself from the blow for a final measure in case his other defenses failed. He felt relieved he did that, or else he would have ended up like Demon, reduced to nothing. The creature cawed and croaked, but no more cries came from the human head split down the middle. It crashed into the walls, shaking the foundations of this laboratory, writhing until it stopped, the other two sets of eyes closing for good.

Erden burned intense flames into the hybrid until the flames finally caught on and ate away at the corpse.

"We did it!" Sirsi said in triumph. "Nicely done."

"Where is the control for Velfen?" Oscar didn't share her cheers of victory. There was no victory here or anywhere. The existence of these foul hybrids was not a victory, for the New Dawn was still out there. There was no victory after Velfen was stopped, only a safe path to retreat from a lost battle.

"It's past this door. Notice how it didn't break at all during this fight?" Sirsi tapped the door.

Oscar gathered the remains of his Ein and focused, "Open it."

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